Thursday, March 28, 2013

Coulant au chocolat or molten lava cake, with a surprise!

Chocolate wrapped in chocolate, a soft oozing tender heart waiting to be released. That's the promise of the molten chocolate cake. You grab your spoon and dig in, releasing a chocolate flow from the cake casing. What an evocative sight! I can't imagine someone would be able to resist this sight without being taking a bite, no matter how small!

The French chef Vongerichten claimed the creation of this delicacy in 1987 in New York city, but the other French chef Jack Torres disputed this claim saying it was created in France.
It has been suggested that the well known French chef Michel Bras, after a day skiing with his family, went home and enjoyed a hot chocolate that warmed them all up, and he started to think about transferring this heart warming moment to his food recipes.

After 2 years of experimentation he developed the coulant au chocolant. Since then, it became a must have and an extremely popular dessert across the globe.

With time this recipe has been copied and simplified. I also had my take on this recipe and share with you a modified version with some additions. The result is amazing and you will find it hard to resist doing the dessert over and over again.

100 g chopped dark chocolate (at least 70 percent)

2 eggs

35 g sugar

35 butter

20 g flour

5 g freshly toasted and ground almonds

few drops of coffee liquor

The seeds of half vanilla bean

Lindor chocolate (use any flavor) optional

Some butter and cocoa powder to grease the ramequins

First start melting your chocolate in bain marie or microwave, once melted add the butter and let it melt with the heat of chocolate. Whisk the eggs, vanilla and liquor then add the sugar and beat well until all combined.

Slowly add the chocolate to the egg mixture and mix well, then add the flour and the almonds and mix again until all well combined.

Grease your ramequins and cover them with cocoa powder, pour some of the batter then put the lindor then cover it with more batter, fill only 2/3 of the ramequin.

Chocolate still bubbling!

Heat your over to 240C, and place the ramequins in the fridge for at least 15 min. Bake the coulant for 10 min. Take out and leave it to cool for 5 min then serve it with ice cream if you wish.

Lindor heart, coconut flavor

You can easily freeze the batter. I froze some batter for five days and then took out of the deep freeze, put it in the fridge for a day and bake the following day. It will taste great. I didn't try the deforst option in the microwave, so I wouldn't know if it works. Either way, if you freeze the batter, do as I did and you will enjoy the coulant as if it were freshly made.

Once you try the recipe you will want to make it everyday, it is so easy to make and tastes so good!